A GOOFY IDEA WHOSE TIME SHOULD NEVER COME!

From the onset of the Houston mayoral campaign, all of the candidates promised not to raise taxes and to put more police officers on the street, an oxymoron since they can’t possibly put more officers out there without raising taxes. In the mayoral runoff campaign, both candidates promise not to raise taxes. One also promises to put more officers on the street. He is an out and out liar because he knows damn well that he cannot do so without raising taxes.

The other candidate has promised to overcome the shortage of officers with a novel idea whose time should never come! There are a number of different local law enforcement agencies operating within the city limits of Houston – the Houston Police Department, the Harris County Sheriff’s Department, eight different Constable departments (one from each precinct), the Metropolitan Transit Authority police, the Houston Independent School District police and several college and university police departments.

In place of adding more Houston police officers, this candidate would work out an arrangement by which the officers from any one of those other law enforcement agencies would answer calls if they were closer to the scene than the nearest Houston police unit. What a God awful idea!

If she were to somehow implement that goofy idea, I can foresee officers from the different agencies rushing to the same scene, especially the transit, school and college cops who rarely get to do what is commonly thought of as “real police work.” I can foresee shoving matches and even fisticuffs breaking out between officers from different agencies, each fighting to take charge of a crime scene, as has happened in the past between Houston police officers and deputy constables who took it upon themselves to answer HPD calls.

But the worst part of that goofy idea is the fact that the competence level of officers differs from agency to agency. Back in the ‘70s, I used to attend meetings of the Houston Area Council of Governments because my school, College of the Mainland, was the official designated regional law enforcement training center for the 13 counties served by HGAC. During a heated discussion about the proliferation of so many policing agencies within Harris County, Johnny Holmes the outspoken district attorney at the time, called attention to the competence levels of different law enforcement agencies.

Holmes, never one to worry about the political consequences of his remarks, got the Harris County sheriff and constables all riled up by exclaiming it had been the experience of the district attorney’s office that Houston police officers were far more competent in conducting investigations than the deputies of the sheriff and constable departments. While that gap has since been closed, I am sure that the Houston police officers are still more competent than most of the deputies, while trailing far behind are the transit, school and college cops.

There are good ideas whose time has come, but the idea that officers from the police agency closest to a call within the City of Houston will conduct the investigation is not one of them. God forbid if that should ever come to pass!